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6 workers now presumed dead after Baltimore bridge collapse

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Six construction workers who went missing when Baltimore’s Francis Scott Key Bridge collapsed early Tuesday are now presumed dead, officials say.

Maryland State Police and the U.S. coast guard said there was little, if any, chance the workers would be found alive based on the freezing water temperature and the length of time they’ve been missing.

“At this point, we do not know where they are, but we intend to give it our best effort to help these families find closure,” Col. Roland Butler said at a news conference after darkness fell Tuesday.

A recovery operation will begin at 6 a.m. ET on Wednesday. Butler said structural engineers will help formulate a plan for divers to navigate the dangerous wreckage and avoid the sharp steel debris, which could puncture a diver’s suit or oxygen line.

The construction workers were repairing potholes on the bridge when the cargo vessel Dali smashed into one of its supports around 1:30 a.m. ET.

The steel bridge plunged into the frigid Patapsco River below, with one twisted section coming to rest on top of the vessel’s bow.

The crew had issued a mayday call moments before the crash. With the ship barrelling toward the bridge at “a very, very rapid speed,” Maryland Governor Wes Moore said authorities had just enough time to stop cars from coming over the bridge.

“These people are heroes,” Moore said. “They saved lives last night.”

 

Watch the moment when a ship hits a bridge in Baltimore, triggering collapse

 

A container ship hit a major bridge in Baltimore, causing several vehicles to fall into the Patapsco River. Fire officials initially said crews were searching for at least seven people in the waters.

The state’s transportation secretary said the six workers were filling potholes on the bridge, which carries 11.3 million vehicles a year and leads to the busy Port of Baltimore.

Jeffrey Pritzker, executive vice-president of Brawner Builders, which employed the workers, said they were in the middle of the bridge when it came down.

Guatemala’s consulate in Maryland said in a statement that two of the workers were Guatemalan citizens. It did not provide their names but said consular officials were in contact with local authorities and assisting the families.

Honduras’ Deputy Foreign Affairs Minister Antonio García told The Associated Press that a Honduran citizen, Maynor Yassir Suazo Sandoval, was missing.

He said he had been in contact with Suazo’s family.

And the Washington Consulate of Mexico said via the social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter, that citizens of that nation were also among the missing. It did not say how many.

No bodies have been recovered.

‘An unthinkable tragedy’

The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) held back Tuesday to make room for the search, but said a team of 24 people will begin their investigation by gathering information from the command centre until they are able to get to the ship.

“We chose not to board the vessel today to allow time for the search and recovery,” said Jennifer Homendy, the board’s chair.

Rescuers pulled two people out of the water after the collapse. One was treated at a hospital and released hours later. Multiple vehicles also went into the river, although authorities did not believe anyone was inside.

“It looked like something out of an action movie,” Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott said, calling it “an unthinkable tragedy.”

Homendy told reporters that nautical operations experts with the NTSB will gather information on the vessel’s safety history, its owner and its operations in the hours leading up to the crash.

Investigators will also be taking “recorders” from the ship, though Homendy said she could not provide more detail on which recorders, or what they might have captured.

Structural engineers, highway personnel and a “human performance” expert will also participate in the investigation, she said.

The temperature in the river was about 8 C early Tuesday, according to a buoy that collects data for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

 

A bridge collapse from ship impact ‘extremely unusual’: expert

 

Replacing the collapsed bridge in Baltimore could take a number of years, says David Knight, a U.K. engineering specialist. He expects a significant investigation and a ‘design period’ before construction of an entirely new structure can begin.

Ship was en route to Asia

The Dali was headed from Baltimore to Colombo, Sri Lanka, and sailing under a Singapore flag, according to data from Marine Traffic. The container ship is about 300 metres long and about 48 metres wide, according to the website.

Synergy Marine Group, which manages the ship, confirmed it hit the pillar while under control of one or more pilots — local specialists who help guide vessels safely in and out of ports. The ship is owned by Grace Ocean Private Ltd.

Synergy said all crew members and the two pilots on board were accounted for, and that there were no reports of any injuries.

The steel frame of the Francis Scott Key Bridge sits on top of the container ship Dali after the bridge collapsed, Baltimore, Maryland, on March 26, 2024. (Photo by Jim WATSON / AFP) (Photo by JIM WATSON/AFP via Getty Images)
The steel frame of the Francis Scott Key Bridge sits on top of the cargo ship Dali on Tuesday. The bridge in Baltimore collapsed early Tuesday morning after the vessel hit a pillar of the bridge. (Jim Watson/AFP/Getty Images)

U.S. President Joe Biden expressed condolences to victims and their relatives for the “terrible accident,” and said the federal government would provide whatever assistance was necessary to help in the search and rescue effort. He said he intends for the federal government to pick up the entire cost of rebuilding.

“This is going to take some time,” Biden said.

Last year, the Port of Baltimore handled a record 52.3 million tons of foreign cargo worth $80 billion US, according to the state.

The head of a supply chain management company said Americans should expect shortages of some goods because of the impact the collapse will have on ocean container shipping and East Coast trucking.

“It’s not just the Port of Baltimore that’s going to be impacted,” said Ryan Petersen, CEO of Flexport.

Baltimore Police Department Commissioner Richard Corley said there was “absolutely no indication” the contact with the bridge was intentional.

The FBI was on the scene, and said there was no credible information to suggest terrorism.

 

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STD epidemic slows as new syphilis and gonorrhea cases fall in US

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NEW YORK (AP) — The U.S. syphilis epidemic slowed dramatically last year, gonorrhea cases fell and chlamydia cases remained below prepandemic levels, according to federal data released Tuesday.

The numbers represented some good news about sexually transmitted diseases, which experienced some alarming increases in past years due to declining condom use, inadequate sex education, and reduced testing and treatment when the COVID-19 pandemic hit.

Last year, cases of the most infectious stages of syphilis fell 10% from the year before — the first substantial decline in more than two decades. Gonorrhea cases dropped 7%, marking a second straight year of decline and bringing the number below what it was in 2019.

“I’m encouraged, and it’s been a long time since I felt that way” about the nation’s epidemic of sexually transmitted infections, said the CDC’s Dr. Jonathan Mermin. “Something is working.”

More than 2.4 million cases of syphilis, gonorrhea and chlamydia were diagnosed and reported last year — 1.6 million cases of chlamydia, 600,000 of gonorrhea, and more than 209,000 of syphilis.

Syphilis is a particular concern. For centuries, it was a common but feared infection that could deform the body and end in death. New cases plummeted in the U.S. starting in the 1940s when infection-fighting antibiotics became widely available, and they trended down for a half century after that. By 2002, however, cases began rising again, with men who have sex with other men being disproportionately affected.

The new report found cases of syphilis in their early, most infectious stages dropped 13% among gay and bisexual men. It was the first such drop since the agency began reporting data for that group in the mid-2000s.

However, there was a 12% increase in the rate of cases of unknown- or later-stage syphilis — a reflection of people infected years ago.

Cases of syphilis in newborns, passed on from infected mothers, also rose. There were nearly 4,000 cases, including 279 stillbirths and infant deaths.

“This means pregnant women are not being tested often enough,” said Dr. Jeffrey Klausner, a professor of medicine at the University of Southern California.

What caused some of the STD trends to improve? Several experts say one contributor is the growing use of an antibiotic as a “morning-after pill.” Studies have shown that taking doxycycline within 72 hours of unprotected sex cuts the risk of developing syphilis, gonorrhea and chlamydia.

In June, the CDC started recommending doxycycline as a morning-after pill, specifically for gay and bisexual men and transgender women who recently had an STD diagnosis. But health departments and organizations in some cities had been giving the pills to people for a couple years.

Some experts believe that the 2022 mpox outbreak — which mainly hit gay and bisexual men — may have had a lingering effect on sexual behavior in 2023, or at least on people’s willingness to get tested when strange sores appeared.

Another factor may have been an increase in the number of health workers testing people for infections, doing contact tracing and connecting people to treatment. Congress gave $1.2 billion to expand the workforce over five years, including $600 million to states, cities and territories that get STD prevention funding from CDC.

Last year had the “most activity with that funding throughout the U.S.,” said David Harvey, executive director of the National Coalition of STD Directors.

However, Congress ended the funds early as a part of last year’s debt ceiling deal, cutting off $400 million. Some people already have lost their jobs, said a spokeswoman for Harvey’s organization.

Still, Harvey said he had reasons for optimism, including the growing use of doxycycline and a push for at-home STD test kits.

Also, there are reasons to think the next presidential administration could get behind STD prevention. In 2019, then-President Donald Trump announced a campaign to “eliminate” the U.S. HIV epidemic by 2030. (Federal health officials later clarified that the actual goal was a huge reduction in new infections — fewer than 3,000 a year.)

There were nearly 32,000 new HIV infections in 2022, the CDC estimates. But a boost in public health funding for HIV could also also help bring down other sexually transmitted infections, experts said.

“When the government puts in resources, puts in money, we see declines in STDs,” Klausner said.

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The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Educational Media Group. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

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World’s largest active volcano Mauna Loa showed telltale warning signs before erupting in 2022

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WASHINGTON (AP) — Scientists can’t know precisely when a volcano is about to erupt, but they can sometimes pick up telltale signs.

That happened two years ago with the world’s largest active volcano. About two months before Mauna Loa spewed rivers of glowing orange molten lava, geologists detected small earthquakes nearby and other signs, and they warned residents on Hawaii‘s Big Island.

Now a study of the volcano’s lava confirms their timeline for when the molten rock below was on the move.

“Volcanoes are tricky because we don’t get to watch directly what’s happening inside – we have to look for other signs,” said Erik Klemetti Gonzalez, a volcano expert at Denison University, who was not involved in the study.

Upswelling ground and increased earthquake activity near the volcano resulted from magma rising from lower levels of Earth’s crust to fill chambers beneath the volcano, said Kendra Lynn, a research geologist at the Hawaiian Volcano Observatory and co-author of a new study in Nature Communications.

When pressure was high enough, the magma broke through brittle surface rock and became lava – and the eruption began in late November 2022. Later, researchers collected samples of volcanic rock for analysis.

The chemical makeup of certain crystals within the lava indicated that around 70 days before the eruption, large quantities of molten rock had moved from around 1.9 miles (3 kilometers) to 3 miles (5 kilometers) under the summit to a mile (2 kilometers) or less beneath, the study found. This matched the timeline the geologists had observed with other signs.

The last time Mauna Loa erupted was in 1984. Most of the U.S. volcanoes that scientists consider to be active are found in Hawaii, Alaska and the West Coast.

Worldwide, around 585 volcanoes are considered active.

Scientists can’t predict eruptions, but they can make a “forecast,” said Ben Andrews, who heads the global volcano program at the Smithsonian Institution and who was not involved in the study.

Andrews compared volcano forecasts to weather forecasts – informed “probabilities” that an event will occur. And better data about the past behavior of specific volcanos can help researchers finetune forecasts of future activity, experts say.

(asterisk)We can look for similar patterns in the future and expect that there’s a higher probability of conditions for an eruption happening,” said Klemetti Gonzalez.

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The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Educational Media Group. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.

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Waymo’s robotaxis now open to anyone who wants a driverless ride in Los Angeles

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Waymo on Tuesday opened its robotaxi service to anyone who wants a ride around Los Angeles, marking another milestone in the evolution of self-driving car technology since the company began as a secret project at Google 15 years ago.

The expansion comes eight months after Waymo began offering rides in Los Angeles to a limited group of passengers chosen from a waiting list that had ballooned to more than 300,000 people. Now, anyone with the Waymo One smartphone app will be able to request a ride around an 80-square-mile (129-square-kilometer) territory spanning the second largest U.S. city.

After Waymo received approval from California regulators to charge for rides 15 months ago, the company initially chose to launch its operations in San Francisco before offering a limited service in Los Angeles.

Before deciding to compete against conventional ride-hailing pioneers Uber and Lyft in California, Waymo unleashed its robotaxis in Phoenix in 2020 and has been steadily extending the reach of its service in that Arizona city ever since.

Driverless rides are proving to be more than just a novelty. Waymo says it now transports more than 50,000 weekly passengers in its robotaxis, a volume of business numbers that helped the company recently raise $5.6 billion from its corporate parent Alphabet and a list of other investors that included venture capital firm Andreesen Horowitz and financial management firm T. Rowe Price.

“Our service has matured quickly and our riders are embracing the many benefits of fully autonomous driving,” Waymo co-CEO Tekedra Mawakana said in a blog post.

Despite its inroads, Waymo is still believed to be losing money. Although Alphabet doesn’t disclose Waymo’s financial results, the robotaxi is a major part of an “Other Bets” division that had suffered an operating loss of $3.3 billion through the first nine months of this year, down from a setback of $4.2 billion at the same time last year.

But Waymo has come a long way since Google began working on self-driving cars in 2009 as part of project “Chauffeur.” Since its 2016 spinoff from Google, Waymo has established itself as the clear leader in a robotaxi industry that’s getting more congested.

Electric auto pioneer Tesla is aiming to launch a rival “Cybercab” service by 2026, although its CEO Elon Musk said he hopes the company can get the required regulatory clearances to operate in Texas and California by next year.

Tesla’s projected timeline for competing against Waymo has been met with skepticism because Musk has made unfulfilled promises about the company’s self-driving car technology for nearly a decade.

Meanwhile, Waymo’s robotaxis have driven more than 20 million fully autonomous miles and provided more than 2 million rides to passengers without encountering a serious accident that resulted in its operations being sidelined.

That safety record is a stark contrast to one of its early rivals, Cruise, a robotaxi service owned by General Motors. Cruise’s California license was suspended last year after one of its driverless cars in San Francisco dragged a jaywalking pedestrian who had been struck by a different car driven by a human.

Cruise is now trying to rebound by joining forces with Uber to make some of its services available next year in U.S. cities that still haven’t been announced. But Waymo also has forged a similar alliance with Uber to dispatch its robotaxi in Atlanta and Austin, Texas next year.

Another robotaxi service, Amazon’s Zoox, is hoping to begin offering driverless rides to the general public in Las Vegas at some point next year before also launching in San Francisco.

The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.

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